World of Warcraft has many classes to choose from. Unfortunately, most classes specialize in their one particular skill, and you may not change your characters class. Fortunately, there is one class that doesn’t specialize in any particular skill, but is very good at all skills. This class is the original class of World of Warcraft: The Druid.
Druids are a shape-shifting class, using magic to shift into many various creatures. All forms do different things very well, while not as well as the class that specializes in it. The Druids forms consist of Bear, Cat, Cheetah, Tree of Life, Moonkin, Dire Bear, and Flight Form. While the number of forms may seem overwhelming, and while each has its specific use, one form is often used most of the time depending on what talent tree is chosen.
The first form, Bear Form, is acquired at level 10 and increases armor by 280% of your normal armor value. This gives you the ability to mitigate damage, making you a tank (when fighting with friends, the tank will attempt to force the monster being fought to attack him). To be able to keep the fiend attacking you, you are given many abilities that will force the monster to continue to attack you. Bear form does not deal very much damage and should only be used to mitigate damage. Dire Bear form is eventually attained and will increase armor contribution from items by 360%. This form is most similar to a Warrior.
The second form attained is Cat Form. This form gives you the ability to stealth (turn invisible). You may pounce you opponents gaining the upper hand from the start of the battle, while dealing mass amounts of damage. Unfortunately, there are no armor increases in this form. This form is most similar to a Rogue.
The third form is the cheetah form. This form is attained at level 30, and simply increases speed by 30%.
The next 2 forms are both attainable at level 50, but are talent tree specific, so you may only use 1 of them. If you are a tank (in the feral talent tree), you will not have access to either of these. The Moonkin is a giant owl beast, and specializes in casting nature magic. They are often referred to as Boomkin, because of their ability to do mass damage very quickly, and Oomkin, because of how fast they run out of mana. The Tree of Life in the restoration tree specializes in healing power and will increase the benefit of all healing magic cast to everyone in your party. It also increases mana regeneration. Tree of Life is different from most other healing classes, because it can only cast heal over time spells, referred to as HoT. This can be very useful during boss fights that can freeze everyone, as your heals will continue to heal while no other healer can cast magic.
The final form attained is Flight Form. This allows you to take flight anywhere in Outland, and eventually Northrend. Flying Speed is increased by 60%. There is also an Epic Flight Form attainable by spending five thousand gold and completing a quest. Epic Flight Form increases flight speed by 280%
While the druid does not specialize in any one particular skill, they have the ability to do just about anything great, but not the best. This is supported by the fact that the druid class (restoration talent tree) dominates every other class in player-vs-player combat.